How to Ask About Someone's Health

Lesson Transcript

Hi, everybody! My name is Alisha. In this lesson, I'm going to talk about how to ask about someone's health or any injuries that they might have. We'll talk about questions you can use, some responses and a few things to be careful of when you're asking these questions. So, let's begin.

Okay, first I want to start with this list of questions that you can ask people about their condition. This first group at the top, you can use to ask about illness, so illness means sickness.

The first one is a very general expression.

"Are you feeling okay?"

You can use this when you kind of see someone, maybe they look tired or they might be sick or, maybe, they look, maybe, sad, you could even ask in that case. So, are you feeling okay, is a general, friendly, and caring expression to use. We tend to use it with a little bit of a worried voice like…

"Are you feeling okay?

That's kind of a nice appropriate way to ask this question.

Another one…

"How are you feeling?"

"How are you feeling?" is one we use when we know the other person is sick, like we saw them yesterday, for example, and they had a cold. We want to check on their condition now.

"How are you feeling?"

So, this is something we use after we've seen a sick person or, maybe, they're in the process of recovering from an illness. So, how are you feeling, is also quite friendly.

If you want to be direct, you can say…

"Are you sick?"

So this is good if you hear someone coughing or maybe their eyes are red, something maybe visually or you can hear that like, you know, they sound terrible, maybe. You can say…

"Are you sick?"

It's probably good to use a worried tone of voice.

If you ask, are you sick, and you sound kind of cold and uncaring, you won't seem very friendly. So, if you want to show you care about the other person's condition, ask…

"Are you sick?"

Much nicer.

If you have a guess, you want to guess, for some reason, about the other person's condition, you can ask…

"Do you have a cold?"

So, a cold is the general word we use for like a light sickness, kind of, where our nose maybe get stuffed, meaning, it doesn't work properly, it's hard to breathe, and maybe we need to use tissue a lot to stop it. Maybe, we have a sore throat and, maybe, a cough, as well. So, these are the very common feelings, the common symptoms of a cold.

To ask about that…

"Do you have a cold?"

It's quite common, especially in colder months.

And finally…

"Are you okay?"

This one is very similar to, "Are you feeling okay?"

But, are you okay, is one we can use not just for illness. So, I put it here between illness and injury. We use, are you okay, to talk about illness, yes. "Are you okay?" But we also use it if someone might have been injured. So, if for example, I dropped something on my foot or maybe, I, I fall down, someone might ask me…

"Are you okay?"

Meaning, do you have any injuries? Do you have any injuries? Are you okay?

We can also use this to talk about someone's emotional state like maybe they get really upset or, something bad happens and you can ask about their emotional condition. You can use, are you okay, to do that. So this is relating to injuries and to illness.

Another one. This one, down here, this group is specifically relating to injuries. So injuries are like accident related, something happened to our bodies and we are hurt as a result. So, you can ask this question…

"Are you hurt?"

So again, if I fall down or there was an accident of some kind, I want to ask about the other person's condition, I can say…

"Are you hurt?"

Meaning, do you have any injuries? Are you hurt sounds much like closer, much more friendly. Do you have any injuries, sounds kind of polite and maybe, like, something a doctor would use, perhaps. A friend or someone close to you might say…

"Are you hurt?"

Okay, another one, a more serious one is…

"Are you bleeding?"

So maybe, you have a cut, like a kitchen knife accident and someone asks, "Are you bleeding? So bleeding is a, you know, blood is that red substance inside our bodies. Are you bleeding means, is there blood coming out of your body, so it's kind of grotesque, kind of disgusting to think about, but to ask this question, like for a cut situation, maybe it's really serious, you can ask this…

"Are you bleeding?"

Yes or no?

Okay, finally…

"Where does it hurt?"

So, for example, if you have an injury and you hurt your leg or you hurt your arm and you need to be specific about the place where the injury happened, the doctor or someone else might ask…

"Where does it hurt?"

Which means, what's the point in your body that's the most painful?

So, for example, like I broke my wrist and the doctor might say, "Where does it hurt?" I could say, "It hurts here," it hurts at my wrist, it hurts at this point. So you can point and answer this question. "It hurts here."

Okay, finally, the final question on this list is a recovery-related question. So, I mentioned this one, how are you feeling, which we can use for some recovery. We can also use this, maybe, like a week after a serious illness, maybe, or like, even a few hours after, maybe, something unpleasant happened, for example.

"Are you feeling better?"

So this better, we see the comparative form. It means, are you feeling better than you were feeling before. Like, are you feeling better than you felt yesterday? Are you feeling better than you were feeling a few hours ago? So better than before is what this means.

Okay, so we have these groups; illness-related questions, injury-related questions and a couple of recovery-related questions. So to respond to these questions, you can say, "yes" and give some explanation. I'll go to this in a moment. You can say, "just a bit" or, I'm sorry, "just a bit tired," just a bit tired.

So this is a good, a good response to…

"Are you sick?"

"Do you have a cold?"

"Are you okay?"

If you're not sick, but you are feeling a little down, you can use this…

"Just a bit tired."

"Are you sick? Hmm, just a bit tired."

If you are fine, no problems, you can say…

"No, I'm fine."

Like, "Are you sick? No, I'm fine."

So, this is when you use in direct response to a sickness-related question like…

"Are you sick?"

"Do you have a cold?"

"Are you okay?"

You might here, "No, I'm fine" in response to this, but I think the better response is, "Yes, I'm fine / Yes, I'm okay."

Another good option here, "Are you hurt? No, I'm fine." So, you might hear this in that case as well. So again, direct responses to direct questions there. But, if you want to give your symptoms, you want to explain something like…

"Are you sick? Yeah."

You can use one of these patterns.

"I have a/an," depending on the situation, and then describe your illness or your injury, like…

"Yeah, I have a cold."

"Yeah, I have a broken arm."

"Yeah, I have a headache," for example.

If you're talking about another person, like a co-worker or a friend, you could say,

"He/she has…," please note the conjugation change, "she has a...," maybe, bad cough. She has a bad cough or she has a backache or he has a headache, for example. So you can explain your symptoms or your physical condition with these patterns, so "I have" or "he has." You could use a pattern like "My head hurts" or "My stomach hurts," as well. Those are both fine.

Okay, with these, I want to introduce a couple phrases to use carefully. So, I've listed these three because, if you ask them too directly, you might cause the other person to feel offended, so they might feel angry or upset about this question, so let's take a look.

First one…

"You're looking a bit under the weather."

This expression right here, "under the weather," this means bad, you look bad. You look a bit, "a bit" means a little.

"You look a bit under the weather."

So that means, it looks like your condition is not so good. The reason it's in this "use carefully" category is because, if you just directly say this to, like a coworker, for example, they might feel offended. Maybe, that person feels fine, like there's no problem, they're not sick, they're not tired, so it's like, you're saying directly, "You look bad today." So, be careful with this. We would use this, the best case to use this is in a situation where the co-worker in this case has told us, "I feel a bit sick" or "I have a cold." Then, you can respond with like, "Yeah, you look a bit under the weather," like to sympathize with that person.

"I see, you do. You look a bit under the weather today."

That's much better. I don't recommend just walking up to someone and commenting like…

"You look a bit under the weather today."

It sounds like you're just saying…

"You look bad today."

So, be careful with this one.

These are similar.

"You don't look so good."

So, this is a common one to use, like for stomachaches or for headaches like for people with that, that visual, like a strong visual of their discomfort, like maybe they're holding their head or their posture is changed because of their stomachache. If you see that and you'd speak with them a little bit and they mention, "I have a stomachache" or "I have a headache," and then you follow up and you say,

"Ah, you don't look so good. Maybe you should go home."

That's much better, it's much better to sympathize after you get information. Again, don't walk up to someone and say, "you don't look so good," unless you're very close to that person.

Same thing here with…

"He/she doesn't sound good."

So again, a verb conjugation point...

"You don't look good."

"He doesn't sound good."

So "sound" here, this refers to something we can hear, so we would use this for like a cough, maybe, or maybe someone's voice is gone, for example. Something, we can hear, we use this. So, if your co-worker has a really bad cough, you might say…

"He doesn't sound good."

"She doesn't sound good."

But again, just be careful, like if your co-worker hears this comment, then they might feel upset, especially if nothing is wrong, but just kind of use this to empth-, to sympathize, rather. So don't, don't be too direct if you want to use this. If you're ever worried, try one of these, instead. These are a little softer and less direct and just use a caring voice when you ask the question.

Okay, so this is an introduction to some questions and some responses you can use to talk about health and to talk about injuries and other physical condition-related things. I hope that it was helpful for you. If you have any questions or comments, or if you want to practice making an example sentence, please feel free to do so in the comment section of this video. Thanks very much for watching this lesson and I will see you again soon. Bye!

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